


A Perception

by sweetrupturedlight



Series: By God's Grace [3]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-31
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-03-20 13:36:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3652329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetrupturedlight/pseuds/sweetrupturedlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt from an anonymous on Tumblr: The Dauphin Suspects</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Perception

Louis, Dauphin of France was ten years old when he began to suspect that everything was not as it seemed. Born to privilege, he was mostly sheltered from news or salacious gossip thought inappropriate for a young royal to bear witness to. Louis never knew his father, the King of France, who had died when he was only four, too young to have any tangible recollection of the monarch. He thought he remembered what he looked like but couldn't be sure if it was a true likeness or just the memory born from the paintings that decorated the walls of the Louvre.

One morning when he'd been playing at hiding from his beloved governess Constance, he happened upon a whispered conversation between two servants. They were older women, but their tongues and minds seemed sharp to someone so young. Speaking rapidly, one regaled the other with the tale of a scandal that had blown through the French court a decade earlier. While the rumours had died as soon as it had surfaced, there had been talk for an almost infinitesimal amount of time, that he was not the son of the King, but the son of a soldier, a Musketeer.

Louis didn't really understand why they would say such a thing, or why in the years that followed, the hurried exchange stayed with him. Something so small, a moment so insignificant. At the time, he'd dismissed it as idle gossip, chatter amongst a class of people who had not much else to amuse or distract from the burdens of their lives. But at ten years old, there had been a small part of him that entertained the fantasy of being the son of a brave Musketeer. It was after all, his favourite pastime to watch the Royal Guard – then under the command of the Musketeer Captain, Athos – and dream about the wonderful adventures they were able to go on, how courageous and noble they seemed, muskets and swords at the ready.

Inexplicably for years thereafter, he always caught himself observing his father's visage in paintings. Sometimes he would even make a special detour towards the palace galleries to stare at the previous Regent's face, trying to discern whether they shared any similar features. In truth, many always said he favoured his Spanish ancestry. After all, he had his mother's complexion and startling blue eyes. That he was  _her_  son was in no doubt.

The older he became, the more he realised he had the power to demand information from people – the  _truth_  even from some. He learned that his father had not been the smartest ruler, nor one with the keenest mind. He learned that his mother, his dear mother, had been marginalised tremendously during his father's reign – perhaps the reason he ensured she would not rule in totality after his death. His father had done nothing to help ease his mother's trepidation of her new life in a strange country. If anything, he had contributed to her feelings of loneliness and isolation. It was hard, Louis soon realised, to feel a connection to a man he never knew.

His mother, Anne, was the light of his life, doting and loving. Since he'd assumed the throne at a young age, she was his constant support, proving to be a capable co-regent - fearless, courageous, but mostly kind and gracious. Despite that, she was never well received because of her Spanish heritage. The French had wanted a French Queen and never quite forgave his father for marrying a Spaniard.

When Louis turned thirteen, he realised for the first time that his mother seemed happy. For the years which proceeded, her behavior had not caused alarm - perhaps because it was how he always knew her to be – a little isolated, lonely even. But it had been the year a Cardinal had come to court and together with his mother, became his trusted council.

Louis was instantly fond of Cardinal Mazarin. A man with a surprising physicality, he had a keen mind, sharp wit and a charming personality for one so pious. If nothing else, he seemed to inspire in his mother a new lease on life. She smiled often, seemed lighter of heart than he ever remembered and because he knew of her unhappiness during her former marriage, he did not begrudge her joy. In fact, such was their bond, that he welcomed it. For years he knew of the liaison between the Dowager Queen and the Cardinal. They did not speak of it, but it was an open secret amongst trusted courtiers.

When Louis married at the age of twenty two, the Cardinal flanked him on one side, his mother and Queen, Maria Theresa, on the other. Later that month he had a portrait commissioned of Mazarin as a gift to Anne. When the artist had completed the assignment, Louis remembered staring at the likeness for a long time - something arresting about the sparking dark eyes, the groomed moustache, the broad shoulders encased in crimson and the dark brown hair that seemed to bend to its own will. It was not, he was amused to admit, the hair one expected from a man of God. But he could relate because his own hair was naturally untamable too.

A year after his marriage, Louis met with his Minister for War, Treville. He was the son of the previous Minister, the esteemed Captain Treville, a man who had faithfully led his father's Musketeers. After talk of war and strategy, Captain Treville told Louis tales his father had told him – of brave Musketeers, danger, intrigue, adventure, of honour and loyalty. It was then that Louis learned something he had never known. That Cardinal Mazarin, as a young man, had served amongst the King's Musketeers. Born René d'Herblay, he had been known as Aramis.

That night Louis visited the portrait he had commissioned and felt the earth shudder beneath his feet. The conversation he had overheard so many years ago came back to him, the two servants appearing before his eyes as if they were real and not conjured from a memory.

_The son of a Musketeer._

He stared at the painting. The eyes were different to his own... but the hair, the way it curled, the way it seemed to yearn to break free of its constraints was so familiar. The broad shoulders, the strong jawline, the straight nose was familiar too. He knew he favoured his Spanish connections, but dear God, looking at the painting now, armed with a whisper of a memory, Louis began to wonder.

Twenty three years his parents had been childless before he came. Another two years before Phillipe, his only other sibling. The country had praised God, hailing his birth as a miracle. Was it possible that his mother had taken a lover? Was it possible that that lover had been a young Musketeer? And was it possible that his true father was now a different man, a man of God, a man who'd helped raise him, gave him spiritual and tactical council? A man who for the last decade had become to him the father he'd never had?

His suspicions he kept to himself, but armed with knowledge, Louis was now able to observe this man with keen interest. He learned the Cardinal loved to shoot - a hobby he claimed - but Louis had seen none so precise with a pistol. Around his neck he wore a jeweled crucifix, the very same crucifix he was sure his mother held in a small portrait his grandparents had had painted the year she'd left Spain to come to France.

Mostly though, Louis observed the unparalled affection that the Cardinal had for him and his mother. Mazarin had always taken an interest, encouraging him since he was a young man of thirteen, a boy on the brink of adulthood. Now as a man, the Cardinal even took an interest in Louis's children, the young Princes and Princesses.

His suspicions however remained nothing more than a collection of possible coincidences shaped by a conversation he was never able to forget. That is, until the day his mother requested permission to marry.

"I request your permission to marry him, Louis. We will never acknowledge the union publicly of course, out of deference to his profession and in memory of your father." Her eyes had shone with such hope, such  _yearning_ , pleading more convincingly than any words she might have offered in mitigation.

"Of course," was all he said. Placing a kiss to her forehead, Louis felt his throat tighten with surprising emotion.

"I leave her care in your capable hands Cardinal," Louis said, his eyes searching, trying to find  _something_.

Mazarin stepped forward, placing his large, rough hand over Louis's –  _the hand of a Musketeer_. With solemn eyes he vowed, "I will love and protect her with all my strength and heart."

With a jolt of inevitable comprehension, Louis felt the power of truth settle within him.  _Strength and heart._  From the moment he was old enough to remember, his mother always referred to her sons (both of them) as  _my strength and heart._

Louis pulled the Cardinal into an embrace, holding tightly to him for a moment. If Mazarin was surprised at the ferocity of the gesture, he gave no sign of it. Looking to Anne, his mother had tears in her eyes – easily explained by the fact that she had his permission to wed. But he knew her emotion came from a different source. Before her stood father and son. Like many things, it was something they would never speak of, acknowledge or admit.

Coincidence became Louis's reality and he knew without further proof that his father was not the previous Regent, but a Musketeer, a man who had cast off the soldier and come to his mother – come to  _him_  – as a man reborn.

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: I am no historian, but a quick wiki tells me that Cardinal Mazarin and Anne were suspected of being secretly married. With Aramis currently in a monastery, I thought this fit.
> 
> Credit to fgfdw on tumblr who posted her theory on Cardinal Mazarin and got me thinking in this direction.
> 
> I am taking prompts. So find me on tumblr at sweetrupturedlight and drop me an ask. Or message me here. Thanks for reading x


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